


The Laurens Children

by Zordosia (orphan_account)



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Implied Transphobia, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Sexism, Slavery mention, implied suicidal ideation, sibling relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-21
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-16 13:43:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8104600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Zordosia
Summary: They had all been waiting for John to come home for so long that his arrival felt anticlimactic. It was like Martha was expecting John to step out of the carriage a personification of all the justifications he had given for his absence. In perfect military dress or a barrister’s costume, maybe carrying volumes of the classics or a sword or a rifle or something. Instead, he simply looked like every other South Carolina gentleman, but a little more travel-worn and tired.John Laurens's time back in South Carolina, before he went to fight.





	

They had all been waiting for John to come home for so long that his arrival felt anticlimactic. It was like Martha was expecting John to step out of the carriage a personification of all the justifications he had given for his absence. In perfect military dress or a barrister’s costume, maybe carrying volumes of the classics or a sword or a rifle or something. Instead, he simply looked like every other South Carolina gentleman, but a little more travel-worn and tired.  
  
He hugged her of course, and told her how much he’d missed her, but then he was whisked away by other family members and acquaintances, who were more relevant to his life. Martha had to wait until that evening, when he was settling back in to his old room, to talk to him. He had been drawing in his sketchbook when she came in but he put it down and looked up at her with a smile. She had a thousand questions- did he have any new gossip about the war from across the ocean, what was studying the law like, who was the most interesting person he’d met in London- but he looked tired and so she carefully weighed her questions based on their importance and likelihood to be answered to any real degree. She landed on, “what’s she like?”  
  
She had chosen it based on its singular relevance to both of their lives so she was completely thrown when John stared at her and asked, “who?”  
  
“Martha,” she told him. He frowned at her. “Your wife?”  
  
His face dropped. “She’s nice.”  
  
Her father had been brief in his letter about John’s engagement, she hadn’t been able to get much out of her uncle either, but she figured that was because they didn’t know much about Martha Manning, not because of this. She hadn’t expected her brother to have come back from Europe heartless.  
  
“Seriously, John?”  
  
“I’m tired, ok Martha?” He was staring at the closed door behind her. “I don’t want to deal with this right now.”  
  
“You knocked her up, didn’t you? Did you fucking run away to war to get away from her? I swear to God, John-“  
  
“You can’t speak to me like that.”  
  
Now he was looking at her, standing up from the bed, fists balled, chin up. Martha realized he was mirroring her own posture and felt herself shrink a little. “We’re not kids anymore. Things are different now. You’re being disrespectful to me.”  
  
She didn’t know why she hadn’t thought of that. How she had looked at him and only seen a few more inches in height and hair, a few fewer freckles than she remembered, a smaller smile. How she had missed the fact that their relationship had become something entirely new, how she hadn’t expected that.  
  
John’s eyes dropped and the corner of his mouth wobbled. Maybe not something entirely new. She could navigate this, she would just have to adjust a bit.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Martha said. Her tone was soft and her gaze was lowered. “I’m just worried about you, is all. I haven’t seen you in so long. And I just want you to be happy.”  
  
John slumped back on the bed, and rubbed his face. “I’m ok,” he said. “It’s just complicated.” Martha waited, and he dug his nails into his forehead. “I don’t love her.”  
  
She had been expecting that. “A lot of couples don’t, at first,” she said, softly, gently, low. “You’ll probably end up falling in love with her.”  
  
“I won’t,” John said. She had been expecting that too, but not like that. She had been expecting him to say it the way Harry would complain about having to ride his third favorite horse. Not the way that she would argue with one of her tutors when she knew for a fact that they were wrong. His certainty scared her.  
  
“I’m sorry,” she said. John nodded.  
  
When she left John’s room, she looked through her stack of letters, and found the ones Martha Manning had sent her. Manning was a good letter writer, clever, witty, honest, engaging. They had been having an exchange about a book on medicine Martha had been reading. Folded up in one of the letters was a note from John, admonishing her to write back to Manning. He had liked Manning. He would like Manning. Martha left the letters folded on her desk and went to bed.  
  
-  
  
John spent most of his time with Harry. Riding around with him, rough-housing with him, talking to him about the things he learned in Europe. Polly tried to sneak into these bonding sessions. She successfully hid under Harry’s bed for an hour once before a sneeze gave her away, and Harry chased her out. Polly came running into Martha’s room, crying that John and Harry hated her.  
  
“You need to stop being a dick to her,” Martha told John the next day. He was in his study, he said he was writing correspondence but she could tell from the way his hand moved that he was just sketching. “I know she’s a little brat. But last time she got this worked up she cut off all her hair, and I don’t want to deal with that again.”  
  
“You want me to put her in breeches and let her change her name to George?” Martha gritted her teeth. John hadn’t learned any subtlety in Europe, she knew he thought that she had fallen down in being a positive feminine influence. And that was why Polly was stuck in this ridiculous mannish phase.  
  
John was talking again. “He reminds me so much of Jemmy, Martha. It’s like I’m with Jemmy again.”  
  
Martha barely remembered James. He was a cute baby, loud, he would grasp at her finger and refuse to let go, that’s all.  
  
“You weren’t there, Martha. You don’t know what it’s like.”  
  
She wondered if John remembers their mother, how she would pull Martha up onto her lap and let her write little annotations in her diary, how she would sing to her every night, how she would would let Martha sit in on her social calls, and praise Martha for being so polite and well mannered afterwards. She wondered if John knew how hard it was to be a mother to Harry and Polly when her only reference point for motherhood was an open wound.  
  
John had stopped drawing now. His head was bowed and his eyes were shut and his lashes were shining. John had had to be a father to Jemmy though, and he failed. Martha wondered what it would be like to lose Harry or Polly.  
  
“I can’t imagine what you’re going through,” she said, as gently as possible, softly, low. “But try to spend some time with Polly too?”  
  
The next day, he spoke with Polly over breakfast, then went out horseback riding with Harry again.  
  
“Does John hate me because I’m not a boy?” Polly asked, as Martha tucked her into bed.  
  
“John doesn’t hate you,” Martha told her. Martha sang to her as Polly lay in bed, staring at the ceiling with big, wide eyes.  
  
-  
  
Martha knocked on John’s study door. No answer, but he might have just fallen asleep. She opened the door, stepped inside. He wasn’t there, but his sketchbook was. She couldn’t help herself. She picked it up. There was a drawing of a man from the torso up, bare-chested, the V of his hips trailing off.  
  
“What the fuck, Martha?”  
  
She started, but remained where she was. She didn’t want him to see the repulsed look on her face, for many reasons. He snatched the sketchbook out of her hands. “That was fucking private. You have no right.”  
  
“Who is he?” she asked.  
  
“Fuck off, Martha.”  
  
“How do you know him?”  
  
“Fuck OFF, Martha!”  
  
His voice cracked. He was leaning on the desk heavily, his back to her, but she could hear his breath coming high-pitched and rapid. Her anger at what he must have done, her fear at what he might do, ceded to pity for the moment. She put her hand on his back.  
  
“Fuck off, Martha.”  
  
“It’s going to be ok,” she said. “We love you. We can help you.”  
  
He spun around, grabbed her wrist. “Don’t tell anyone.”  
  
He looked terrified, but it was a relief. Acting like this didn’t exist was the easiest and most comfortable option. She nodded. “I promise.”  
  
When she got back to her room, she put letters from Martha Manning under her bed.  
  
-  
  
John didn’t leave his study much after that. Harry sat outside the door. John ignored him when he walked out. The next day, he told Martha to keep Harry away from him.  
  
“It’s my fault Jemmy died, Martha,” he said. His eyes were red and he clearly hadn’t been sleeping.  
  
“It was my punishment,” he told her.  
  
“Jemmy’s death affected everyone, not just you,” she told him. She thought through every word choice as carefully as possible, like when John would play chess with her and he had her in check. “Killing a person would be a… very stupid way for God to punish you. Because every death hurts so many people. God would want people to live and for you to get better, instead.”  
  
It was maudlin and cliche and she lost. John nodded.  
  
She went back to her room and remembered all the games the two of them played as children and she cried.  
  
-  
  
John left soon after that, accompanied by a one of their father’s slaves. She looked at him, taller and stronger and sadder than the last time he left. She wondered if the four of them, the remnants of his family, would be enough to bring him back. She looked at him, fidgeting in place, eyes on the road, resigned, and she knew it wouldn’t be enough.  
  
She hugged him as tightly as possible, and when she said “I love you,” she made sure her voice shook but no tears fell. She didn’t want to overwhelm him, but she wanted to make sure he knew. She knew she could get just a little more out of him.  
  
She was good at her calculations. He was crying as he hugged her, and his voice broke when he said, “I love you too.”  
  
When she went into his study after he had left, she saw that he had left his sketchbook. She opened it up to the first page, and saw a sketch of what Jemmy must have looked like when he was older. She put it under her bed with the letters Martha Manning had sent her. Then she began a new letter to Manning, and wrote until she heard Harry calling for her.

**Author's Note:**

> It's my hc that Mary Eleanor was trans: http://azuladosia.tumblr.com/post/149627141146/sweet-little-polly-is-the-admiration-of-every-body
> 
> Thanks so much for reading, and any comments or kudos would make my day!
> 
> I'm theoroark on tumblr if you want to say hi.


End file.
